Forever grateful. Though he and wife Aja Volkman split earlier this year, Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds thanked her during his Hollywood Film Awards acceptance speech and even called her “babe”!
“Where are you, babe?” Reynolds, 31, said on stage while searching for his ex, also 31, in the audience at the award show on Sunday, November 4. “Oh, there you are. This is my girl, Aja, and she’s from Eugene, Oregon. She studied the stars and grew up on astrology, and I grew up on Mormonism, and her parents worshipped The Grateful Dead, and my parents worshipped Jesus Christ. And we met, and I was like, ‘Oh, praise the lord, a break!’ And she was like, ‘Oh, a guy who’s all conservative. Great!’”
The rocker explained that Volkman, who fronts the indie rock band Nico Vega, asked him at the time about reconciling Mormonism with LGBT rights. Reynolds examined the same intersection in this year’s HBO documentary Believer, for which he received the Hollywood Documentary Award at the A-list event on Sunday.
“I really had a crush on her, but I never had to think about it because I’m a privileged white, straight male,” he recalled in his speech. “That’s a privileged as you get. I’m tall and now I’m a rockstar. It’s like, privilege!”
Turning to his ex, Reynolds said, “You sat at the table with me, and you talked with me, and you taught me. You’re the reason that I’m here. I love you. Please have these conversations with people. It leads to things like this and it will save our youth.”
The couple announced their split in April, putting an end to their seven-year marriage. “I think life moves forward and we’re doing good,” Reynolds exclusively told Us Weekly in June.
He and Volkman share three daughters: 6-year-old daughter Arrow and 19-month-old twin girls Gia and Coco.
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
